2. Replace what you use. If you use a factory full of plastic, start up another set. Just keep production flowing. If you don't need it when it's done, sell it. This helps keep an extra bit of cash coming your way.

3. Free up the bottleneck. The biggest bottleneck in the game is the Farmers Market. If you see Fruit & Berries, Beef, Cheese, Cream or Flour Bags in the Trade HQ, buy it. Eliminating one of those items from the equation can make production much easier for you.

5. Plan ahead for the cargo ships and airport. Start production of those items as soon as it tells you what's coming. The long build time items usually require two or three of each. The raw goods and other short term items may take up to 10. Build more than you need and sell any excess. Try to minimize the time the cargo vehicles spend in your city. Pack them up and let the next shipment get started ASAP.

6. Harsh Reality. Do not be mistaken, this game is basically a slot machine: a finely tuned machine designed to separate you from your money. If you want to build a city, play SimCity, Cities:Skylines, or CitiesXXL on the PC. You'll get much more desirable results in a fraction of the time. However if you have tons of patience and don't mind taking the long way round, this can be a very enjoyable casual game.

7. You don't really need design skills. You don't need more than one cross street. Your entire city can be laid out like the letter E with streets leading to dead ends.

8. Stick to the basics. Early on, don't build more than what you can cover with the basic services: Sewer, Water, Fire and Health. Don't be afraid to demolish buildings you can't support.

9. Go Big. If you want skyscrapers, you'll need to have more than just the basics. You also need to have multiple specializations covering the area: Parks, Education, Transportation, Entertainment, Gambling, Landmarks or Worship.

10. Eureka! If searching for expansion or storage items, dig deep into the Trade HQ. It is rare to find one of those items listed on the main screen. I find most of my items by selecting cities selling other items, and discovering them in among the other items they're selling.

11. Don't Forget to Pop The Bubbles. When visiting cities at the Trade HQ, make sure to click on the blue bubbles found in the city. You'll often find Tokyo, storage or dozer items gifted to you by the game.

12. Buy! Buy! Buy! Buy every expansion item/storage item you see in the Trade HQ, even if you're not currently expanding. If you don't want them, list them in your Trade Depot (unadvertised) for your neighbors. If you're good to them, they'll be good back to you later down the line.

13. Sell! Sell! Sell! Never sell an item at less than full price, unless you're trading it to someone for $1.

14. Daniel sells at a discount. Daniel never sells at full price, so I buy everything he has. You can then use it, or list it at full price to make a profit. Remember, if no one buys it, Daniel will buy his own items back from you.

15. Be a good neighbor. If you see a valuable item listed for $1 by a neighbor, do not take it. Someone's probably trading it to a friend.

16. Be a good neighbor part two. I'll sometimes keep my trade depot stocked with rare goodies (or long term items) for my neighbors. If I see something good in the Trade HQ, but I don't need it, I'll often pick it up anyways and list it. Things that take a long time like Sugar and Spices, Glass, etc. Even if no one takes it, Daniel will eventually reimburse the cost by buying it from you. No harm, no foul, and yet you've given your neighbors opportunities to find stuff easier.

17. Campfires are best built at night. Load up the factories with all the long term items before you go to bed so that when you wake up you'll have your fire pits, frozen yogurt, cream, electronics and other goodies ready and waiting for you. The simple items: metal, wood, plastic are better made during the day while you can babysit the game.

18. Can I get that on easy-pay? If faced with a large road upgrade, build a small section of cross street. It will break up the road into smaller, more reasonable payments. You'll still eventually need to upgrade but you can put the expense off for a while. It's like putting the upgrades on a payment plan.

A short segment of cross street can help break up the cost of road upgrades into more reasonable amounts.

19. Be Social!: Join one of the Facebook groups to find friends to play with. There's a bunch of them. Each has it's own personality and culture. When joining, I'd suggest being a fly on the wall for a bit to understand how each group interacts before jumping right in to the middle of things.

You can just search Facebook for "SimCity BuildIt" and you'll see a bunch. A good starting group would be SimCity BuildIt International which can be found here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/SCBIInternational/

No need to waste money upgrading roads - just demolish and rebuild. The game picks roads at random (about one per 6 hours it seems) as busy, it's not based on supposed use like in the original SimCity games.

does anyone know if i need those omega buildings to upgrade to maglev roads. because i dont have any space for them and i removed my omega buildings because i want to grow and not spend so much time and coins on specialized item lotteries. im level 33 and those roads are level 37 (i think)

Does anyone know why the presents in my neighboring cities have stopped popping up? I've been checking for a while now and they seemed to have stopped completely. I've tried not playing for a few hours, exiting the game, restarting my tablet and nothing seems to fix it. Thank you!

From what I understand, the gifts used to appear in cities by random in a 4-hour period. However it seems the duration has been extended to 24 hour periods recently. I tested by going through all my friends list and collecting gifts at 12pm (+8 GMT), then going through the entire list in 4 hour duration. No gift bubbles appeared until the next day at 12pm (+8 GMT).

It also seems that the hit rate will drop the more you collect. From 1 out of 3-5 cities, it drops to 1 out of 15-20 cities by the time I collected around 7 gift bubbles. Or maybe it's just luck. I don't know.

Once he is of the proper level, he will be offered a building to convert to epic. It's possible he will need to have one of the really tall shiny ones before getting such an offer. To get those, max out the population of the starter lot -- at least 130

Keep popping the blue bubbles in other people's cities and you'll occasionally receive Vu pieces. You can also find them being sold by other users They're rarely advertised though, so go to random cities a bunch and you'll occasionally find one.

I know I occasionally receive offers from the game to spend money on war card packs. Other than that, the best way is join a super-active club that does pretty well in wars and doesn't take much time off in between.

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